


(we wanted to play but there was nothing left to play for)

by feverbeats



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4489782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sometimes I think you keep more secrets than I do, Mr. Eames," Arthur says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(we wanted to play but there was nothing left to play for)

**Author's Note:**

> Is this story different from [Here in Spain I am a Spaniard](http://archiveofourown.org/works/156242)? NOT IN ANY APPRECIABLE WAY, PROBABLY. Is there a plot or a message? AGAIN, NOPE. But I haven't written anything in about seven months and I needed to stretch my writing muscles. Anyway, this is the same Eames from that story, although maybe not quite the same Arthur.

The well-dressed man standing in the doorway says, "I've been waiting for fifteen minutes, Mr. Eames."

_Eames_ is a name she probably won't stick with for long. It doesn't fit right, and neither does her cheap suit.

“Sorry to keep you,” she slurs in an imitation of both drunkenness and the accent she used last time. “Wouldn’t want to throw off the timetable you’ve got written in that little black notebook in there.” She gestures sloppily toward Arthur’s briefcase.

Arthur looks, as predicted, disgusted.

They keep meeting like this.

*

"Eames?"

She's in a paisley dress with blood on it, mustard-yellow stockings, hair done up, forging just as well as she does in dreams (almost). She turns around, because it's easier to lie when she can see someone's face.

"Not at all," she says.

His eyebrows go up. They do that sometimes. It's almost like an expression. "Eames."

"You blew my cover," she says ruefully. That's true. But Arthur won't understand the whole truth of it, which is what matters. The best lies are undetectable.

“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t sound it.

*

Arthur won't stop. "Mr. Eames," he says in his flat, dry, dull little voice. She works jobs where she plays Charles, Judith, Matthew, William, Vera, but he always calls her Mr. Eames.

They're playing cards and Eames can't remember how she got here.

Arthur pushes a pile of chips into the center of the table, representing more than Eames has in her wallet. She bluffs the hand out and loses, but it won't matter until they're settling up later. The walls of the room are done in a pale orange, and Eames thinks this must be the back room of a club.

She can't remember how she got here.

"Sometimes I think you keep more secrets than I do, Mr. Eames," Arthur says. He's wearing a vest and no tie. Casual. How unlikely.

"I've got too big a mouth for secrets, dear," she tells him. She's in love, she realizes. When did that happen? She missed it. She always does.

She looks down and she's wearing a brilliant maroon dress. Her tits look exceptional. She looks up.

"You stuck a bloody needle in my arm," she tells Arthur, and the world comes crashing down around her ears.

She wakes up shivering and alone in a warehouse, wearing a polo shirt and wondering what he was after.

*

"It's not my real name," she tells him in Callais, when he finally catches up to her in a restaurant.

He rolls his eyes. "I know. And what's my real name?"

She hadn't thought he was clever enough to use a false one, but then she realizes he's never given a surname at all.

Instead of answering, she says, "I'm avoiding you, I'm afraid."

He sighs like he's annoyed, but not sorry. "You can't blame me for trying." When Eames goes to protest, Arthur holds up a hand. "It wasn't for my own information. You think I'm interested in any of your secrets? My partner has a job for you."

Eames hears _partner_ and wonders. "I always imagined you worked alone."

Arthur grimaces. "I did. So, will you let me screen you properly?"

Eames relaxes a fraction and signals to the waiter for the bill. Arthur will pay it, with only minor complaint. "You mean you'd like to knock me out and interrogate my projections. That's what you wanted last time, isn't it? It won't do you any good. They're about as forthcoming as I am."

"Your subconscious can’t _lie_."

"Oh, but it does."

How deeply in denial do you have to be for your projections to tell lies? Eames could tell you a thing or two about denial. Or she couldn't.

*

"This is Mr. Eames."

Eames meets her fair shares of strange people in the world of dream-sharing. There are criminals both common and uncommon, soldiers, johns, artists, fanatics.

Mallorie Cobb's eyes are burning like comets. She makes Eames so uncomfortable, for six wrong reasons, half a dozen right ones.

"I have a plan," she says.

With the Cobbs, Eames learns catastrophe on a whole new scale. She's always been good at in a deeply personal, embarrassing way, but now she watches destruction up close on a daily basis. Dom and Mal are the kind of people dream-sharing was made for.

Eames wonders if they understand it. She wonders if Arthur does. Eames wonders a lot of things. She never enquires too deeply into what the Cobbs _do_ in the world of dream-sharing. The end result is not as important as the material in between, that's the one thing the four of them can agree on.

Aside from that, however, Eames knows she's an outsider to their little threesome. She wonders about that, too, but not deeply enough to stay on for more than a job or two at a time.

She considers, briefly, bringing Yusuf in on one of their missions with the Cobbs. With the kind of work they do, they could use someone with Yusuf's skill. And Arthur would die of fury. She'd love to be the one to make Arthur that angry. But when Eames brings it up, Yusuf just laughs affably and calls the Cobbs a few choice names in one of the many languages Eames is only slightly familiar with.

"I've heard about them," Yusuf says. "No thank you. I'd sooner be locked up. I'm staying well away, and I suggest you do, too."

They're probably better off this way, anyhow. Eames shouldn't mix old and new colleagues. Yusuf, unlike some, knows Eames. He's met more of her real faces than she'd care to let him know, although he doesn't do a damn thing about it.

*

"Well, Eames." Arthur sounds a little frustrated. "We should probably fuck."

They're waiting in a hotel room for a mark who isn't going to show, and Eames can't believe Cobb has roped her in again. She likes Cobb. He's likeable. Mal is wonderful and vile. Arthur is worse. But Cobb has something of value: talent unmarred by viciousness. Eames wonders what that's like.

The mark hasn't shown, and Arthur is bored (boring), smoking (he doesn't really smoke, Eames thinks), and saying these things.

"Should we?" Eames asks. Bored. Three-piece suit that hangs too loose, hair a little long, looks terrible. Looks tired. This is as close as she comes to being herself.

"I think it's inevitable." How can such a skinny little thing loom like that? Arthur has become her disaster, her fear, thank _god_ he's so boring.

Eames opens her mouth and the wrong thing comes out. "Of course it is."

*

"Have you ever considering becoming an architect?" His head is tilted like he's actually interested in the answer and they're sitting in bed together afterwards. He's warm. She hadn't expected that.

She can't immediately see a way it would be useful to him to know the answer to his question, so she answers.

"I do people, sweetheart."

He's silent for a moment, devoid of snappy comebacks, so she asks, "Have you ever learned how to forge?" He has no imagination, but the sad fact is, he wouldn't need one. He's got no tell.

"You know I haven't. You know all about me."

As long as he thinks that, she's happy. She's the one who feels transparent.

"Why don't you like me?" she asks after a moment.

"You're messy," Arthur says. Honesty is the worst.

"When we met . . . You didn't think very well of me," she says.

Arthur frowns. It's definitely an expression. "Well. You didn't think very well of me, either, did you?"

"And where do we go from here?" Eames asks, propping herself up on one elbow. She's wearing less than she'd like. "Wait, let me guess. A dozen more encounters in countries all over the world, all of which will culminate in either sex or a fistfight, before something terrible happens to one or both of us. Eternally _ex_ -boyfriends."

Arthur looks incredibly irritated. "I thought we could start with dinner. And I'm nobody's boyfriend, ex or otherwise. And let's be honest, neither are you."

"Let's not be honest," Eames says. How horrifying.

"Let's," Arthur says. "Eames."


End file.
